Georgia’s energy consumption costs are among the highest in America, study finds

High energy bills got you down? You’re not alone. In fact, Georgians’ monthly energy costs are the highest in the South and among the most expensive in the nation, when factoring in all sources — gasoline, natural gas, electricity and others.

That’s according to a new ranking from personal finance website WalletHub, for which analysts compared the average monthly energy bills in each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia using data on the following factors:

The District of Columbia ($203) Colorado ($252) and Washington ($253) ranked among the nation’s least energy-expensive regions, according to the analysis.

This July, you’re likely to consume more energy than any other month this year, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. August is the month with the second-highest energy consumption.

But why do energy costs vary across the country?

According to University of Southern California professor Lisa Schweitzer, “transport and access make a fairly large difference in many states for gasoline costs.”

Brown University professor Matthew Turner also told WalletHub that costs “tend to be higher in states that mandate the use of renewable energy,” which “is cleaner and contributes less to global warming.”

“There are big differences between the power-generating capacity of traditional and renewable energy power plants. Most nuclear and gas-fired plants run full-time, so 1 megawatt from those plants supplies about 1,000 homes,” The AJC’s Russell Grantham wrote in 2017. “Most renewable energy plants only produce when the wind blows or the sun shines, so 1 megawatt from those plants supplies homes only part of the day, or in effect significantly fewer homes. But solar and wind-powered installations also are much cheaper and quicker to build and run. Georgia Power expects contracts to supply 1,050 megawatts of green energy to cost about $2 billion.”

“As a large electric service provider in Georgia (one of among nearly 100 co-ops and municipal electric systems in the state), Georgia Power’s electric rates are 14 percent below the national average,” company spokesman John Kraft told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The company’s base electric rates have been frozen since 2016 and will not be adjusted until 2020 at the earliest.”

Both Georgia Power and the Georgia Public Service Commission have teamed up to help expand the state’s renewable energy resources “using innovative approaches that do not put upward pressure on electric rates,” Kraft said.